We of advanced years might have to pinch ourselves pretty hard, but this month marks the 40th anniversary of the inaugural World Cup - the women's version, that is, beating those dilatory menfolk to the punch by two full years. Last month's enterprising if faintly shocking revamp of the Ashes schedule suggests that, when it comes to marching down Innovation Street, the chaps still lag behind the chapesses.

Deciding the winner by aggregating results across all three formats may strike some as a compromise too far, but the merits are considerable. The economic practicalities are plain: packaged right, fewer matches will be necessary to obtain a significant and meaningful outcome. Furthermore, in linking three discrete overall results, a more complete picture of cricketing skill will unquestionably emerge. Whether this actually engenders a greater incentive to stage Tests, already resisted womanfully, remains to be seen.

And so, inevitably, to the controversially reconstituted ICC Cricket Committee's latest ruminations on the Future Tours Programme, which, welcome as they are, continue to exude uncertainty and ooze nerves, prompting the usual canyon-esque divergence of opinion on this site and elsewhere. After all, depending on perspective, a minimum of four Tests per annum - the formula currently being floated - seems at once eminently reasonable, grossly unfair and plain daft. Eminently reasonable to New Zealand, Sri Lanka and West Indies, whose boards appear to hold about as much enthusiasm for staging five-day bouts as certain members of our House of Lords have for the rules on lobbying; grossly unfair to Bangladesh and Zimbabwe (how they would love to be able to play more), and plain daft to the rest (though Cricket South Africa might be overcome by ambivalence).

Imagine Sky Sports or ESPNStar being content with broadcasting four Tests a year? OK, it doesn't exactly demand inhuman effort, but the necessary compensation in screen hours, in the shape of endless ODIs and T20 internationals, would drag the FTP even farther from all those noble pronouncements about the "primacy" of Tests. And we all know the p-word needs to be taken with a cellar full of salt.

For those who fear the worst, there was one shard of good news last week with the publication of an ECB survey offering hope for the most venerable version of the international game from an improbable quarter. Nearly 3000 England followers were asked to cite their preferred format; of these, 200 were under 25 years of age, of whom as many as 61% plumped for Tests. To see this as any more than mildly encouraging, sadly, is to master the art of self-delusion. In England, Test cricket should be played on the Southbank, rubbing shoulders with the National Theatre, the National Film Theatre, the Royal Festival Hall and the Hayward Gallery: a branch of culture warranting protection by the public purse; in too much of the rest of the world, it's an obligation, a listed building of limited appeal: a 16th-century pub without a karaoke machine or a pool table.

The players themselves seem rather more fervent, but for how much longer? The only way Test cricket can cement a medium-term future, therefore, is for its administrators to bury their sack of hatchets and tackle the matter with a singularity of purpose - which means making "primacy" more than just a posh word signifying a sharp PR department with a thesaurus in its drawer.

And to do that means making it unequivocally clear that this is the apex of the game, its highest form of expression, its ultimate measure of skill. And to do that means devising a credible, meaningful world championship, a task utterly beyond the ken of cricket administrators ever since that first ill-fated stab in 1912.

From that unpromising starting point we can turn to that new women's Ashes schedule for stimulus. One Test, three ODIs and three Twenty20s will be played, with six points allocated for the solitary four-day Test and two for each of the shorter contests; the side netting the most points, up to a maximum of 18, will take possession of the wooden ball - the women's urn, its contents a bat burnt in the Harris Garden at Lord's in 1998. So far, so neat.

The difference between the sexes, however, is as stark as can be. On the plus side, nine nations have played a women's Test this century, including Ireland and Netherlands; August's Anglo-Australian encounter at Wormsley, though, will not merely be the 134th overall but just the fifth since 2006. From 1954 to 1961 - when the only participants were Australia, England, New Zealand and South Africa, admittedly - there were 14. There was a six-set rubber between West Indies and India in 1976-77 and an Ashes five-setter eight winters later, but to find the last three-match series you have to rewind to 1998. Multi-day cricket, moreover, is as rare in the women's domestic game as an all-run-five.

We could be half-full about all this. Where one section of the game is desperately trying to invigorate the near-dead, the other - or parts thereof - is thrashing around trying to sort out a format that has never been played so widely or frequently. The reality is immeasurably more complex, of course, as exemplified by the soaring prevalence of those insufferably puny two-match rubbers (hence, presumably, that figure of four Tests per year) and even - sin of sins - substitutions of scheduled Tests by ODIs and T20s. In an age when economics take precedence over results, a reversal of the tide seems highly unlikely without some sizeable carrots and an exceedingly sharp stick.

So why not kill a number of birds with a single stone? Why not a world league incorporating all three formats? Each variant could have its own independent championship, in turn feeding specific tournaments and rivalries, but the holiest grail would be the same for all. For the very first time in the history of the planet's most durable international sport, it would be possible to ask "Who's the best?" and receive an informed, valid, only mildly contentious answer.

Ah, but what ingredients can we sprinkle into this cooking bowl to ensure that Test cricket remains the ultimate test of cricketkind? Consider the following recipe, on occasion cribbed shamelessly from f***ball:

Test win - 10pts

Test draw - 5pts (tie 8pts)

Test series win - 50pts (3 Tests), 75pts (4 Tests), 100pts (5 Tests)

ODI win - 5pts (tie 3pts)

ODI series win - 25pts; draw - 15pts

T20 win - 3pts (tie 2pts)

T20 series win - 15pts; draw - 10pts

Beneath the meat and potatoes lurk those sticks and carrots: a maximum of three ODIs or T20s per series and, while one-off Tests would be permissible, there must be at least three to comprise a series. In other words, the more Tests you play, the more points you stand to win. Oh, and just to sex it all up and lend it that Premier League sheen - while keeping the players' workloads at manageable levels, thus enhancing the prospects for year-round quality - we'll insist on 38 matches per nation per year, with variety left strictly to bilateral negotiation. Who knows how many doors this could open? Who knows what grand ideas this might give the Irish and the Dutch and the Afghans?

Let's take a pair of extremities. Sri Lanka play 25 ODIs in 2015, winning 16 and losing nine while taking four series and drawing one; they also play 11 T20s, winning eight, and claim all four rubbers. During that span, they also play one two-Test series and lose 2-0, the upshot a year-end tally of 279 from a win-loss record of 24-14. Now let's spin the dial. In the same span, India play 20 ODIs, losing nearly twice as many as they win (13-7), and also lose all five T20s, but win ten and draw three of their 13 Tests, spawning two victorious five-match series and one in a tri-chapter rubber: 400 points from a win-loss record of 17-18. Now you might deem this eventuality to be an abomination of everything that makes sport this planet's closest approximation to genuine meritocracy, but at least it would make it clear which national board prioritises the pursuit of excellence and glory, and which the pursuit of paper.

Better yet, a World Test Championship could spin off the back of this with no impact on the schedule whatsoever. Taking a leaf out of an old rugby league book, nations could consensually nominate, in advance, which Test in a series would be eligible for ranking points, thus obviating any need for additional fixtures (though a final might make a nice crescendo). But hey, let's think big. Let's dream.
Every four years, let there be a two-month series of playoffs involving the top four nations in the Test classification (outside IPL hours, natch): simultaneous Champions League-y home-and-away semi-finals followed, if required, by an eliminator on neutral turf, and thence by a best-of-five final - two home, two away, one neutral. And if only three games are needed to resolve the spoils, cancel the remainder. For decades, the NBA, the NHL and Major League Baseball have been terminating dead rubbers with extreme prejudice; riots have yet to ensue.

Oh, and any deciding match, semi-final or final, shall be played to a finish. It's my dream and I'll be as idealistic as I want.

Rob Steen is a sportswriter and senior lecturer in sports journalism at the University of Brighton

6) Pitch Quality: No more green-tops, no more dust-bowls, no more rank turners, no more flat-tracks. Pitches should have something for all while retaining local flavour (for e.g.: swing in the UK, seam in NZ, pace and bounce in the West Indies and turn and bounce in Sri Lanka). Pitches to be designed in a way that "challenges batsmen". Scoring a 100 ought to be somewhat more difficult and less frequent than bagging a 4 wicket haul.

Lets put these basic systems for test cricket in place first and worry about a unified cricket championship later.

on June 7, 2013, 0:32 GMT

ashes remain as is. ODI world cup to be reduced to 40overs and t20 leave as is

Rhygwyn
on June 6, 2013, 16:04 GMT

Yes because there is not enough ODI and T20 rubbish already. Great idea Rob!

on June 6, 2013, 11:57 GMT

Let's not.

Let's leave the ashes alone. I agree with James B, it's well meant, but this is one of the worse ideas I've heard.

johnathonjosephs
on June 5, 2013, 21:43 GMT

Good Idea, but the points need some adjusting. Imagine a 5 series Test Match between 2 evenly matched sides. Imagine the score is 2-2, giving each team 20 points. They each may have 20 points, but whoever wins that last match gets the series + 1 test win meaning that the winner gets a total of 110 points from that single game. Imagine that on paper between an extremely close side: Losing Team = 20, Winning Team = 130. Now imagine a mismatched series where the winning team wins 4-0 (one match has been drawn). The scoreline for that will be: Losing Team = 5, Winning Team = 145. The points definitely will need to be adjusted, but the idea is in the right place

on June 5, 2013, 15:32 GMT

The idea works fine for women's cricket as long format cricket is pretty much dead worldwide there. I'd also welcome it for domestic cricket to keep sides interested all season. You still get one day and Championship title winners and then an overall team of the year award. The winner of the T20 and the overall team of the year winner could both be rewarded with Champions League slots.

The dead rubber issue is daft. With many short series out there, there are precious few dead rubbers. If we followed Mr Steen's idea of ditching dead rubbers, we'd have missed out on Lara breaking the world record twice. England have had some fabulous dead rubber games in the last 20 years. The modern pro doesn't have 'dead' games. There's too much pressure to perform, both for the established player and the up and coming player. Now dead rubber opponents like Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, that's a different matter...

Deuce03
on June 5, 2013, 14:57 GMT

I get the impression that some commenters haven't read the article, only the headline. From what I understand, Mr Steen isn't proposing replacing The Ashes with a multiformat championship, but introducing a unified championship structure for the world incorporating all three formats. The Ashes would (or could) remain a five-Test series between Australia and England, which is all it is at the moment in FTP terms anyway.

on June 5, 2013, 13:21 GMT

Another example of the infantisationof life in Britain.

The Ashes are serious, not some toytown tounament.

on June 5, 2013, 12:59 GMT

Agree with @Batmanian, there is no problem with The Ashes, its other areas that need working on.

@Rob Steen, I don't really expect that by weighting test cricket wins as being more meritorious on some sort of championship ladder will suddenly make the whole show a greater attraction to the Indian viewing public, for example. At the end of the day its going to be whatever brings viewers to the TV screen. I think that means more white ball cricket in countries such as India and the West Indies, with countries such as Australia and England continuing to uphold their traditions with plenty of the red ball stuff. Every country has their own favourite flavour, I see no great reason to actually try and alter this. Winners are grinners and individual nations may as well play what they are good at, rather than having their fans suffer through a 3 test series, far better to switch on the lights, break out the pyjamas and have a hit and a giggle if you are a david taking on goliath.

laughinglion
on June 5, 2013, 12:27 GMT

Have for a while thought this concept should be applied to club cricket - too many youngsters not sticking with the 'longer' form 50-ish over league cricket, so why not create a dual 50-over / T20 league, with discrete leagues but an overall cup?

Thus in full support for the international game - but would modify as follows:

1) The tricky bit: ensure competitors play each other an equivalent number of times in a given period, or the table will never be recognised as authoritative
2) Also tricky: dictate centrally the ratio of Test/ODI/T20 series, otherwise the table is likely just an award to whomever plays the most Tests (per your example)
3) Award points only for SERIES results, not individual matches - thus negating the divergence in numbers of matches comprising each series, but offering more points for greater margins of victory / narrower losses (thus meaning there is no such thing as a dead rubber)

Get it done!

Un_Citoyen_Indien
on June 7, 2013, 4:00 GMT

Make a few mandatory rules:

1) Each test nation must play a fixed 10 tests per calendar year.

2) 5 tests are to be at home and 5 away.

3) Bilateral test series must have no more than 3 test matches. 4 and especially 5 test series are way too many. Equally, 2 tests must not constitute a 'series'.

6) Pitch Quality: No more green-tops, no more dust-bowls, no more rank turners, no more flat-tracks. Pitches should have something for all while retaining local flavour (for e.g.: swing in the UK, seam in NZ, pace and bounce in the West Indies and turn and bounce in Sri Lanka). Pitches to be designed in a way that "challenges batsmen". Scoring a 100 ought to be somewhat more difficult and less frequent than bagging a 4 wicket haul.

Lets put these basic systems for test cricket in place first and worry about a unified cricket championship later.

on June 7, 2013, 0:32 GMT

ashes remain as is. ODI world cup to be reduced to 40overs and t20 leave as is

Rhygwyn
on June 6, 2013, 16:04 GMT

Yes because there is not enough ODI and T20 rubbish already. Great idea Rob!

on June 6, 2013, 11:57 GMT

Let's not.

Let's leave the ashes alone. I agree with James B, it's well meant, but this is one of the worse ideas I've heard.

johnathonjosephs
on June 5, 2013, 21:43 GMT

Good Idea, but the points need some adjusting. Imagine a 5 series Test Match between 2 evenly matched sides. Imagine the score is 2-2, giving each team 20 points. They each may have 20 points, but whoever wins that last match gets the series + 1 test win meaning that the winner gets a total of 110 points from that single game. Imagine that on paper between an extremely close side: Losing Team = 20, Winning Team = 130. Now imagine a mismatched series where the winning team wins 4-0 (one match has been drawn). The scoreline for that will be: Losing Team = 5, Winning Team = 145. The points definitely will need to be adjusted, but the idea is in the right place

on June 5, 2013, 15:32 GMT

The idea works fine for women's cricket as long format cricket is pretty much dead worldwide there. I'd also welcome it for domestic cricket to keep sides interested all season. You still get one day and Championship title winners and then an overall team of the year award. The winner of the T20 and the overall team of the year winner could both be rewarded with Champions League slots.

The dead rubber issue is daft. With many short series out there, there are precious few dead rubbers. If we followed Mr Steen's idea of ditching dead rubbers, we'd have missed out on Lara breaking the world record twice. England have had some fabulous dead rubber games in the last 20 years. The modern pro doesn't have 'dead' games. There's too much pressure to perform, both for the established player and the up and coming player. Now dead rubber opponents like Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, that's a different matter...

Deuce03
on June 5, 2013, 14:57 GMT

I get the impression that some commenters haven't read the article, only the headline. From what I understand, Mr Steen isn't proposing replacing The Ashes with a multiformat championship, but introducing a unified championship structure for the world incorporating all three formats. The Ashes would (or could) remain a five-Test series between Australia and England, which is all it is at the moment in FTP terms anyway.

on June 5, 2013, 13:21 GMT

Another example of the infantisationof life in Britain.

The Ashes are serious, not some toytown tounament.

on June 5, 2013, 12:59 GMT

Agree with @Batmanian, there is no problem with The Ashes, its other areas that need working on.

@Rob Steen, I don't really expect that by weighting test cricket wins as being more meritorious on some sort of championship ladder will suddenly make the whole show a greater attraction to the Indian viewing public, for example. At the end of the day its going to be whatever brings viewers to the TV screen. I think that means more white ball cricket in countries such as India and the West Indies, with countries such as Australia and England continuing to uphold their traditions with plenty of the red ball stuff. Every country has their own favourite flavour, I see no great reason to actually try and alter this. Winners are grinners and individual nations may as well play what they are good at, rather than having their fans suffer through a 3 test series, far better to switch on the lights, break out the pyjamas and have a hit and a giggle if you are a david taking on goliath.

laughinglion
on June 5, 2013, 12:27 GMT

Have for a while thought this concept should be applied to club cricket - too many youngsters not sticking with the 'longer' form 50-ish over league cricket, so why not create a dual 50-over / T20 league, with discrete leagues but an overall cup?

Thus in full support for the international game - but would modify as follows:

1) The tricky bit: ensure competitors play each other an equivalent number of times in a given period, or the table will never be recognised as authoritative
2) Also tricky: dictate centrally the ratio of Test/ODI/T20 series, otherwise the table is likely just an award to whomever plays the most Tests (per your example)
3) Award points only for SERIES results, not individual matches - thus negating the divergence in numbers of matches comprising each series, but offering more points for greater margins of victory / narrower losses (thus meaning there is no such thing as a dead rubber)

Get it done!

gibboj
on June 5, 2013, 11:45 GMT

you have it backwards keep everything as it is except have a single world cup where the teams play a mixture of T20, ODI and Tests. In that order so the finals are tests.

on June 5, 2013, 11:14 GMT

Love you Rob, but this is one of the worst ideas i've ever heard !

Munkeymomo
on June 5, 2013, 11:09 GMT

That's a bad idea, and you should feel bad about it.
Seriously though, no. The Ashes is test matches. I like T20s and to a lesser extent, ODIs, but the Ashes is test matches. Including other formats would completely devalue it. It's fine for the women's version as it doesn't hold as much esteem as the men's, but the Ashes is the pinnacle of test cricket in the two countries and one of the last bastions of test cricket. This idea is really stupid.

vladtepes
on June 5, 2013, 10:56 GMT

i don't think i like the idea of consolidation much, but i have long supported the idea of playing odi between tests, not just after the test series is over. also, there are only 2 formats, unless you consider batting practice a format.

Captainman
on June 5, 2013, 10:47 GMT

Because Cricket is already such an unpopular sport played by somewhere around 07-12 countries of more than 200, with the women's game, there is simply no interest even among the small populous Cricket nations. I have seen quite a fair bit of women's Cricket including their 'World' cups and there is not even 1 crowd watching so that tells the whole story about the women's game in Cricket in my opinion :))

on June 5, 2013, 10:19 GMT

Women's Ashes will be contested over three formats this year. Why not base a men's championship along those lines?
because it's a stupid idea

on June 5, 2013, 9:41 GMT

For Tests, why not an annual league of one-off Tests (no series!) No one can tell me why we must play Test series yet every domestic series is round robin.

Batmanian
on June 5, 2013, 8:48 GMT

The idea's a good one - but it's not the Ashes, women's or otherwise. There's nothing wrong with the Ashes as a spectacle; it's annoying enough that it's not six Tests long. Or seven. Countries where the Test series lack gravitas (or length) could consider some sort of hybrid comp. Have no problem with Australia vs NZ going that way - two Tests, two ODIs and two T20Is, for example. Or better still, merge home and away fixtures, so there's a five Test late summer series, three in one country, two in the other. Work for BD and Zim.

dave_mar
on June 5, 2013, 7:36 GMT

Interesting idea, I think it has got some merit. I would be interesting to retrospectively apply the points to international matches over the past decade or so to see who comes out top over previous years.

As for the dead rubbers in test series, instead of completely scrapping them, they could be replaced with some ODI/T20 matches to give those spectators something to watch who have bought tickets for the matches. This may also encourage more test matches to be scheduled knowing the shorter games can be used as fillers.

TATTUs
on June 5, 2013, 3:54 GMT

I think ZIM, BANG, IRE, AFG, KENYA, SCOT may be should play Associate Test matches. Better not to include T20 for these calculations.

No featured comments at the moment.

TATTUs
on June 5, 2013, 3:54 GMT

I think ZIM, BANG, IRE, AFG, KENYA, SCOT may be should play Associate Test matches. Better not to include T20 for these calculations.

dave_mar
on June 5, 2013, 7:36 GMT

Interesting idea, I think it has got some merit. I would be interesting to retrospectively apply the points to international matches over the past decade or so to see who comes out top over previous years.

As for the dead rubbers in test series, instead of completely scrapping them, they could be replaced with some ODI/T20 matches to give those spectators something to watch who have bought tickets for the matches. This may also encourage more test matches to be scheduled knowing the shorter games can be used as fillers.

Batmanian
on June 5, 2013, 8:48 GMT

The idea's a good one - but it's not the Ashes, women's or otherwise. There's nothing wrong with the Ashes as a spectacle; it's annoying enough that it's not six Tests long. Or seven. Countries where the Test series lack gravitas (or length) could consider some sort of hybrid comp. Have no problem with Australia vs NZ going that way - two Tests, two ODIs and two T20Is, for example. Or better still, merge home and away fixtures, so there's a five Test late summer series, three in one country, two in the other. Work for BD and Zim.

on June 5, 2013, 9:41 GMT

For Tests, why not an annual league of one-off Tests (no series!) No one can tell me why we must play Test series yet every domestic series is round robin.

on June 5, 2013, 10:19 GMT

Women's Ashes will be contested over three formats this year. Why not base a men's championship along those lines?
because it's a stupid idea

Captainman
on June 5, 2013, 10:47 GMT

Because Cricket is already such an unpopular sport played by somewhere around 07-12 countries of more than 200, with the women's game, there is simply no interest even among the small populous Cricket nations. I have seen quite a fair bit of women's Cricket including their 'World' cups and there is not even 1 crowd watching so that tells the whole story about the women's game in Cricket in my opinion :))

vladtepes
on June 5, 2013, 10:56 GMT

i don't think i like the idea of consolidation much, but i have long supported the idea of playing odi between tests, not just after the test series is over. also, there are only 2 formats, unless you consider batting practice a format.

Munkeymomo
on June 5, 2013, 11:09 GMT

That's a bad idea, and you should feel bad about it.
Seriously though, no. The Ashes is test matches. I like T20s and to a lesser extent, ODIs, but the Ashes is test matches. Including other formats would completely devalue it. It's fine for the women's version as it doesn't hold as much esteem as the men's, but the Ashes is the pinnacle of test cricket in the two countries and one of the last bastions of test cricket. This idea is really stupid.

on June 5, 2013, 11:14 GMT

Love you Rob, but this is one of the worst ideas i've ever heard !

gibboj
on June 5, 2013, 11:45 GMT

you have it backwards keep everything as it is except have a single world cup where the teams play a mixture of T20, ODI and Tests. In that order so the finals are tests.